The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods of managing normally independent or unassociated business artifacts using an integrated business artifact management system (IBAMS) to deliver a cohesive, linked, and traceable network of related and integrated artifacts that supports improved business knowledge and impact analysis.
Businesses generally produce a litany of different business artifacts that represent a considerable wealth of business information. These business artifacts may include, for example, regulatory documents, sales documents, product documentation, customer records, spreadsheets, inventory, business rules, computer programs, user interfaces, and so forth. Traditionally, business artifacts have been stored across a wide array of vertical best-of-breed business tools and document repositories that are largely independent and mutually incompatible, resulting in business data being disconnected and scattered across a number of isolated data islands.
Data islands are generally non-integrated collections of business artifacts that are separately stored across a network. There is no facile way to move business artifacts between these isolated data islands, nor is there a ready way of linking these business artifacts in a manner that provides a holistic perspective of the entire inventory of business artifacts in a cohesive and relational manner. As such, achieving traceability and performing impact analysis across multiple data islands of disparate business artifacts is difficult and inefficient. For example, it can be difficult to holistically determine the impact that a potential change in policy or procedure may have on a business, which can lead to considerable inefficiencies. When preparing for a new project, for example, despite the volumes of business artifacts available to the project members, the generally vertical, independent, incompatible, and unlinked nature of these artifacts results in an inability to succinctly prepare and assemble the disparate artifacts in a proactive and cohesive manner. Further, this usually results in a complete and independent recreation of equivalent business artifacts and knowledge, representing considerable rework and inefficiency.
Integrated business artifact management systems (IBAMS) provide solutions for centrally managing disparate business artifacts. Such systems generally enable traceability and enable impact analysis with respect to a centralized collection of business artifacts. For example, an IBAMS can rapidly identify all business artifacts from a collection that relate to or include a particular feature or condition. However, IBAMS can restrict how users create business artifacts for integration into the collection. For example, IBAMS often require that business artifacts be created using particular software tools, such as those that are integrated into (e.g., native to) the IBAMS. These integrated software tools may be significantly different from the software tools to which a user is accustomed and, further, may suffer from limited functionality compared to more familiar software tools. As such, a user may be forced to learn a new software interface and may be limited by the functionality of the required software tool when producing business artifacts for integration in the collection. Therefore, while IBAMS enable traceability and impact analysis, IBAMS can also significantly reduce user freedom to use software tools of choice when producing business artifacts. Compared to users' Best-of-Breed tools, IBAMS typically feature a disappointing volume of compromised features, specializations, and usability. Furthermore, reengineering existing artifacts within the IBAMS may be unfeasible, may add unnecessary risk, and/or may be perceived as being unacceptably threatening to existing tools and processes. Historically, these factors have resulted in users resisting efforts to migrate to an IBAMS in favor of retaining their familiar tools, resulting in no improvements to overall usefulness and cohesiveness of the business artifacts.